I'm still more partial to the math/physics side of STEM than to biology, but it took me until late in college to realize that I was much less partial to it than

I'm still more partial to the math/physics side of STEM than to biology, but it took me until late in college to realize that I was much less partial to it than I'd always assumed. I could probably have been quite happy working in bioinformatics or neuroscience, for many of the same reasons I enjoy physics and programming. But my early exposure to biology in both highschool and college was "sequential" in a wholly meaningless way that pushed me towards the aspects I liked least. Anatomy and cell microbiology are not actually prerequisites for learning about population ecology, nor is macrobiology a real prerequisite to basic neuroscience. It feels like physics/mathematics/engineering education is substantially better at allowing students to engage with the topics they like most, then develop supporting knowledge as they need it to progress further. That drives engagement in the field as a whole, but it also makes the secondary learning easier and more useful. The linear "map of the cat" approach to teaching biology is often a bigger cause of 'hard sciences' snobbery than the actual differences between fields.